To set up your own mp3 broadcasting site, you'll first need to download Marco Nelissen's port of icecast. You can get it from Marco's site or BeWare. You will also need to have some mp3 files. A tutorial page on how to rip and encode your own mp3 files will be appearing on this site shortly.

Once you download icecast, unzip it to a directory of your choice.

Then copy shout to /boot/home/config/bin

Next, build your playlist. Assuming you already have a folder with all your favourite mp3 files in it, you will need to run the following command from Terminal

find [path to folder] *.mp3 > shout.playlist

This will create a folder called shout.playlist in your home directory.

IMPORTANT! It is essential that all files in the playlist have the same bitrate.

You are now ready to start broadcasting. It should go without saying that you'll need an open Internet connection up running.
Start icecast from Terminal. The easiest way to do this is to open the icecast folder, then drag and drop the icecast file into the Terminal window. This will print out the path to the file. Hit <Enter>and (hopefully) the icecast server will start. If successful you should see the following:

$ icecast
[26/Jul/1999:22:56:54] Icecast Version 1.0.0 Starting...
Icecast comes with NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
You may redistribute copies of Icecast under the terms of the GNU General Public License For more information about these matters, see the file named COPYING.

[26/Jul/1999:22:56:55] server started...
[26/Jul/1999:22:56:55] listening for encoders on port 8001...
[26/Jul/1999:22:56:55] listening for clients on port 8000...
[26/Jul/1999:22:56:55] listening for remote admin on port 8002...
[26/Jul/1999:22:56:55] waiting for encoder or redirection...

Sometimes things don't go quite so smoothly. Should you get something like this

[26/Mar/2000:23:02:45] server started... [26/Jul/1999:23:02:45] could not listen for encoder on port 8001 [26/Jul/1999:23:02:45]

cleanly shutting down...

try restarting networking from the Network preferences panel.

Next, open another Terminal and enter the following:

shout [ip address] -P letmein -s -l -p shout.playlist

which should get you the following:

$ shout
Parsing arguments...
Adding list shout.playlist without bitrate
Resolving hostname 24.132.44.190...
Creating socket...
Connecting to server 24.132.44.190 on port 8001
Logging in...
Activating signal handlers..
Starting main source streaming loop..
Playing from /tmp/shout/shout.playlist, line 1

No bitrate or command specified,

using autodetect Checking mpeg headers...

Filename:/.../Track1.mp3 Layer: III Version: MPEG-1 Frequency: 44100 Bitrate: 64 kbit/s Padding: 1 Mode: stereo Ext: 0 Mode_Ext: 0 Copyright: 1 Original: 1 Error Protection: 0 Emphasis: 0 Stereo:

2 Playing /.../Track1.mp3 [4:01] Size: 1928509 Bitrate: 64000 (24724 bytes/dot)

[ +......

If you screwed up by spelling your playlist folder name wrongly for example, or it's the wrong directory, you'll get something like this

$ shout [ip address] -P letmein -s -l -p shout.playlist

Adding list shout.playlist without bitrate

Could not open playlist shout.playlist fopen: No such file or directory

Resolving hostname [ip address]...

Creating socket... Connecting to server [ip address] on port 8001 Logging in... Activating signal handlers.. Starting main source streaming loop.. That would be an empty file, exiting

$

Start over!




Please remember that broadcasting any music, including mp3 files, can get you into deep
trouble with various copyright laws if you don't have the relevant permissions.
If you do get into trouble, it will do you no good whatsoever to claim that it was
us that told you to do it!